Creating dramatic 3D artwork - Mangbetu Woman

Martin Nikolov explains the workflow he used when re-imagining a vintage photograph using ZBrush and Photoshop to create his striking Mangbetu Woman...

Inspiration

This was a personal work, made for fun. I saw this picture of a Mangbetu Woman from Citroen's expedition to the Congo in 1925 and I just loved it, so I needed to model it.

This photograph taken by Leon Poirier and George Specht in 1925 is the original inspiration behind this model ©National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution

This photograph taken by Leon Poirier and George Specht in 1925 is the original inspiration behind this model ©National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution

The base mesh

Usually I start directly in ZBrush with DynaMesh because I have more freedom to experiment with the shape and form, but in this case, I wanted to stick as close as I could to the silhouette in the picture.

I started to define the profile using an existing base mesh, which I adjusted according the picture. The head gear was modeled in MODO, using simple box modeling – nothing fancy here. I also used the Edge Extend tool for the hair and apron base meshes, the Tube tool for the rope accessories, and lots of Bevel for that cone-shaped headgear.

Using an existing base mesh to create the main figure and modeling the rest in MODO

Using an existing base mesh to create the main figure and modeling the rest in MODO

Polygroups

When I was happy with the base mesh, I was ready to start sculpting. I imported the model into ZBrush and split it in different Polygroups to make it easier when separating the different parts.

Importing the model into ZBrush to split it into Polygroups

Importing the model into ZBrush to split it into Polygroups

Brushes

My favorite brushes, and those that I use the most often are: Move, Clay and DamStandard with lots of smoothing. For the torn apron, I used the SnakeHook brush with Alpha 23. This part was a good exercise in anatomy and cloth. The finer details were made with custom alphas I downloaded from ZBrush Central.

Decimation

When I finished the sculpting, I decimated the model to around 800,000 polygons from 6,000,000 and moved the image back into MODO.

Decimating the image and transferring it back to MODO

Decimating the image and transferring it back to MODO

First render

At this point, I wanted to make a basic clay render of the model. The render setup was really simple, with 1 background plane and 2 area lights. You can see the first result here in this image. After a few hours, when I looked at the image again, I decided to go further and try more dramatic and contrasting lighting. I decided to accent the silhouette of the Mangbetu woman in front of the African sunset.

Creating a simple render of the model

Creating a simple render of the model

Lighting

To start this, the render setup was built with 2 area lights and a HRDI light from the Studio Environment Set 1, from 9B Studios. I used a black box (a cube with one side deleted) in front of the model, which hid it from the HDRI light, and added a background plane with a yellow luminosity material.

For the body I used MODO's default skin shader with a few tweaks, and the rest of the shaders were made from the default material.

Adding a brighter yellow lighting to the model

Adding a brighter yellow lighting to the model

Passes

I rendered 4 passes to use later on, for the final compositing and color corrections in Photoshop. These were: Final Color, Ambient Occlusion, Material ID and Depth passes.

Creating a range of passes for use later in the post-production stage

Creating a range of passes for use later in the post-production stage

Post-production

In Photoshop, I darkened the body and played a lot with the Curves and Contrast. Finally, I added a slight gradient to the background. You can see the final result in this image.

Hope you liked my project overview and thanks for reading.

The final image

The final image

Related links

For more from Martin Nikolov visit his website
This overview first appeared in the October 2013 issue of 3dcreative
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